30 Sep 2010 11:03:30 GMT
Source: Reuters
* Three Pakistani soldiers killed in attack
* ISAF says helicopters did not cross into Pakistan
* Continued incursions could lead to 'snapping of relations'
(adds comments by intelligence official, execution video)
By Zeeshan Haider
ISLAMABAD, Sept 30 (Reuters) - Pakistani authorities blocked a vital supply route for NATO troops fighting in Afghanistan on Thursday, angered by a cross-border NATO airstrike that killed three Pakistani soldiers, officials said.
Trucks and fuel tankers for foreign forces in Afghanistan were stopped at Torkham border post in Khyber tribal region near the city of Peshawar, hours after the raid, the fourth reported by Pakistani authorities in recent days.
"Yes, the NATO supplies have been stopped. It has been done locally," a senior security official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
A spokeswoman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Kabul, however, said none of its helicopters had crossed into Pakistani airspace. The incident was under investigation.
Pakistan is a crucial ally for the United States in its efforts to stabilise Afghanistan, but analysts say the move to disrupt the supply route underlines tensions in the relationship.
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For more Pakistan stories click [ID:nAFPAK]
or see http://link.reuters.com/kac58m
For a graphic on the incident: http://link.reuters.com/vyv26p
Pakistan blog: http://blogs.reuters.com/pakistan/
For a timeline on attacks, click [ID:nLDE6681G8]
For scenarios on battle with Taliban [ID:nSGE68205L]
For a Q+A on militant attacks, click [ID:nSGE68103X]
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The bulk of military supplies for NATO troops in Afghanistan moves through Pakistan.
Early on Thursday, two NATO helicopters from Afghanistan attacked a border village in Pakistan's Kurram region, the Pakistani security official said.
"The helicopters shelled the area for about 25 minutes. Three of our soldiers manning a border post were killed and three wounded," he said.
But ISAF spokeswoman Major Sunset Belinsky said the helicopters targeted militants in Afghanistan's eastern Paktia province, opposite Kurram, and did not cross into Pakistan.
Pakistan's military had informed ISAF that their border forces had been struck in the attack, she said in a statement.
"ISAF is working with Pakistan to ascertain if the two events are linked. The matter remains under investigation," she said.
It was the fourth possible aerial incursion since last week.
CIA CHIEF
The border row occurred as CIA chief Leon Panetta began a previously scheduled visit to Pakistan for talks with top military and political figures.
Panetta met the head of the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, Lieutenant-General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, and Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, officials said. He was expected to meet army chief General Ashfaq Kayani later.
A senior intelligence official said talks between Panetta and Pasha lasted three hours on Wednesday. Pakistan assured the CIA chief of its commitment to the war on terror, he said.
But the official said incursions into Pakistan were a "red line" and could lead to a "total snapping of relations".
Neither country could afford that, the official said, so it would be a disaster if further incursions took place.
"But we'll live with that or we'll die with that," he said. "We're in a state of war. We've lost more than 30,000 people since 2001. What more can we lose? Another 100,000? These incursions are not something we can tolerate."
Pakistan has said it would consider "response options" if NATO forces continued to violate its sovereignty.
Washington has stepped up missile strikes by unmanned drone planes in Pakistan's northwest, carrying out 21 in September, the highest for a month since it began such attacks in 2008.
Also on Thursday, a video purporting to show Pakistani troops in northwestern Swat region summarily executing a group of bound and blindfolded young men appeared on the Internet.
The military is investigating, the intelligence official said, although he believed it was likely a forgery by the Pakistani Taliban for propaganda purposes.
Allegations of extrajudicial killings have dogged Pakistan's military since it started its clearing operation in Swat and South Waziristan last year. Pakistan has always denied it.
If the video is found to be genuine, it raises troubling questions for the United States and its support for the Pakistani army. U.S. law forbids the support of foreign militaries that have committed gross human rights violations.
Pakistan has received more than $10 billion since 2001 for its help in the war against al Qaeda and other militants. (Additional reporting by Chris Allbritton, Javed Hussain and Kamran Haider; Editing by Chris Allbritton and Ron Popeski) (For more Reuters coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan, see: http://www.reuters.com/places/pakistan.)
Suicide attack on NATO convoy kills 3 civilians
30 Sep 2010 07:27:25 GMT
Source: Reuters
KANDAHAR, Sept 30 (Reuters) - A suicide bomber in a Toyota Corolla blew himself up beside a convoy of NATO troops in Kandahar on Thursday morning, killing three civilians and wounding 9 others, the provincial governor's spokesman said.
Spokesman Zalmay Ayubi said he could not comment on possible casualties within the convoy, and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said it had no immediate information about any incident in Kandahar.
"A suicide bomber targeted a convoy of NATO troops, on the Kandahar-Spin Boldak highway, killing three Afghan civilians and wounding twelve," Ayubi said.
The convoy was near a small bazaar, with a mosque and gas station, when the attack happened, leaving civilians vulnerable, Ayubi said. (Reporting by Ismail Sameem; Editing by Kim Coghill)
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MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (AFP) – Pakistani Taliban on Monday claimed responsibility for two attacks on NATO supply convoys in Pakistan and threatened to carry out more.
"We accept responsibility for the attacks on the NATO supply trucks and tankers," Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman Azam Tariq told AFP.
"I am talking about attacks both in Sindh and in Islamabad," he said in a telephone call from an undisclosed location.
"We will carry out more such attacks in future. We will not allow the use of Pakistani soil as a supply route for NATO troops based in Afghanistan.
"This is also to avenge drone attacks," he added.
At least three people were killed when about 20 oil tankers loaded with fuel for NATO troops in Afghanistan were attacked and set ablaze near the Pakistani capital overnight, police said.
The attack came as Pakistani authorities continued their own blockade of a main land route for NATO supplies for a fifth consecutive day, in response to a NATO helicopter strike that Islamabad says killed three of its soldiers.
Television pictures showed flames towering from the trucks. The trucks were being filled just outside Islamabad en route to Afghanistan early in the morning when gunmen attacked the convoy with molotov cocktails.
In a similar incident on Friday in the south, heavily armed gunmen set ablaze more than two dozen trucks and tankers carrying fuel for the 152,000-strong foreign force fighting the Taliban-led insurgency.
"Three people have died, eight are injured. They have all received bullet injuries and are mostly drivers and their helpers," police emergency official Mohammad Ahad told AFP by phone after the latest incident.
Police said around a dozen people who attacked the supply tankers fled the scene.
Ambushes of NATO convoys are not uncommon, but are normally concentrated in strongholds of Islamist militants in the lawless northwest.
An administrative official at Torkham, the main border crossing, confirmed the blockade was continuing for a fifth day.
Queues of more than 200 trucks and oil tankers have formed at the northwestern Khyber pass border as they wait to deliver supplies.
Washington has described Pakistan's tribal belt on the Afghan border as a global headquarters of Al-Qaeda, a hub of militants fighting in Afghanistan and the most dangerous place on Earth.
More than 3,700 people have been killed in the last three years in a series of suicide attacks and bomb explosions in Pakistan, many of them carried out by the Taliban and other Al-Qaeda-linked Islamist extremists.
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Gunmen in Pakistan torch nearly 30 NATO fuel tankers
09 Oct 2010 02:42:02 GMT
Source: Reuters
* Militants increase attacks after NATO's cross-border raid
* U.S. apology raises hopes Pakistan will reopen supply route (Adds drone strike, background)
By Gul Yusufzai
QUETTA, Pakistan, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Gunmen in southwestern Pakistan set fire to nearly 30 tankers carrying fuel for NATO troops in Afghanistan on Saturday, an official said, two days after the United States apologised to Pakistan for a cross-border air raid that killed two Pakistani soldiers.
Suspected Islamist militants have stepped up attacks on convoys carrying supplies for NATO forces since the Sept. 30 NATO air strike in northwestern Pakistan described by the U.S. ambassador as a terrible accident.
About 20 gunmen set fire to around 30 tankers parked outside at a roadside restaurant near the southwestern town of Sibi in a pre-dawn attack, the official said.
The tankers were on their way to the border town of Chaman.
"The attackers first fired shots and then fired small rockets at the tankers. Twenty-eight to 29 tankers caught fire," local government official Naeem Sherwani told Reuters. He said one of the paramilitary soldiers escorting the convoy was wounded.
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For more Pakistan stories click [ID:nAFPAK]
or see http://link.reuters.com/kac58m
Pakistan blog: http://blogs.reuters.com/pakistan/
Q+A on militants in Pakistan [ID:nSGE69307F] ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^>
The U.S.-backed Pakistani government is battling Taliban insurgents who remain effective despite military crackdowns on their strongholds in the northwest near the Afghan border.
Two suspected suicide bombers struck at a crowded Sufi Muslim shrine in the Pakistani city of Karachi on Thursday, killing at least seven people and wounding 65.
The U.S. apology for the Sept. 30 cross-border raid had raised the hopes that Pakistan would reopen a vital supply route in the northwest for coalition forces which Islamabad shut after the NATO strike, citing security reasons.
A second supply route passing through southwestern Pakistan has remained open.
Pakistan's foreign ministry said after the U.S. apology that security was being evaluated and a decision on reopening the supply route through the famous Khyber Pass would be taken "in due course", but also emphasised Washington and Islamabad were "allies in the fight against militancy".
Trucking routes through Pakistan bring in around 40 percent of supplies for NATO forces in Afghanistan, according to the United States Transportation Command. Of the remainder, 40 percent come through Afghanistan's neighbours in the north and 20 percent by air.
The helicopter strike was the most serious of recent cross-border incidents involving NATO-led forces fighting in Afghanistan, which have stoked tensions with Pakistan.
The United States has been pressing Pakistan to take a harder line against militants launching cross-border attacks from their Pakistani safe havens on Western forces in Afghanistan.
An alleged al Qaeda plot to attack European targets has put Pakistan's performance against militants under further scrutiny.
The United States has also stepped up missile strikes against al Qaeda and Taliban militants by pilotless drones in Pakistan's lawless northwestern border regions in recent weeks.
On Friday night, at least five militants were killed in the latest such strike in the North Waziristan tribal region.
(Writing by Zeeshan Haider; Editing by Nick Macfie)
(For more Reuters coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan, see: http://www.reuters.com/places/pakistan.
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